The next
sections show residential domains, domestic enclaves and living-spaces in
Tetterode
factory's three main
buildings.On
its east side is the huge 'Dacostakade' [dc] block, consisting of two very
different but joined buildings named after their designers: 'Merkelbach' [mb] and
' Hartcamp' [hc]. On its west side is the 'Bilderdijk Old'
building [bd] with a 'satellite' enclave in its adjacent 'Bilderdijk North' buildings [bdN].

The ground levels [L0] of the three main buildings [mb/hc/bd] are workshops, studios,
businesses. Almost total domesticity begins from level-1 [L1] - the only exception is Merkelbach's L1 which is mainly a locked enclave of businesses and the Collective's
administration, with domestic use represented only by a single small home
isolated outside it.

Tetterode's
mode of factory production necessitated stacks of large rectangular workshop
floors that access a stair at each end via lockable steel doors. In all three
buildings all these floors (apart from
Merkelbach L1) are now domestic enclaves whose locked doors open into an internal passage which serves a group of private living-spaces.
Most of these are homes or homes with workspaces, a few are pure workspaces
whose users sleep elsewhere, however because these latter are enclosed in an
enclave and share with its other denizens its inevitable collective character,
facilities and decisions, they seem - unlike the 'outsider' users of the
workshop zones - participants in the substance of Tetterode's
residential heart.

A
few independent apts have always been outside the protection of an enclave, their entry
doors opening directly from the landing of a general-circulation stair.

More
recently, the phenomenon of expanding (family) homes - taking over spaces
vacated by neighbours - has resulted in two enclaves becoming huge independent
apts (both in Bilderdijk L1: the "Lettermagazijn" and the South
Entresol).

An
example of individualistic ad hoc planning and construction: sub-dividing
a large existing living-space, (possibly for a domestic inclusion) with
cement-blocks - Tetterode's ubiquitous construction material.

The
common type of 'stage-2' [1] living-space unit
(the 'basic' small apt or apt+studio [2])
on Tetterode's factory-height floors
(which average around 4m) is a one
window-bay wide simple
cuboid cement-block-walled space usually differentiated only with a
half-height mezzanine-platform (for sleeping or storage) at
its inner entry-end,
reached via more or less substantial steps. Many of Hartcamp's and
Bilderdijk's L2 and L3 living-spaces were (and still are in 2008) of this type,
consisting of one unit or two
with a connecting door (the second
often a studio). Merkelbach was
different - its huge
live-work and apt spaces seem to retain a memory of
its initially sprawling non-domestic studios. However, compared to the much broader Bilderdijk block's
two upper whole-floor enclaves, whose living-spaces are arranged around or branch from central shared spaces,
all Darcostakade's enclaves have the character of a single narrow lane (in
Hartcamp usually straight, in Merkelbach more wandering) bordered with
'row-houses'.

Whatever the initial politic and practical restraints, by 1996 it was clear that (as their sense of the Collective's security mellowed) many
of the inhabitants of this arena of (increasingly) free choice continued to modify and even completely renew their homes, and
that the desire of some to increase the scope of their expressive domesticity would inevitably require
enlargement of their living-spaces. These changes are both endemic to the place and especially stimulated by the multiplication/growth
of families and the opportunity of vacated apts. These self-contained 'stage-3' homes,
increasingly dissociated from their location and independent of shared facilities -
tend to erode the collective social structure and ethos [3], while often reliant for their
realisation on its shared skills and workshops.

Because these ‘house-like’
living-spaces (like those in EDELWEIS) were made in an ‘already-tamed’ site;
in a single burst of building, often by visually aware ‘artists’, in ‘tabula
rasa’ spaces; they convey a sense of ‘set-piece’ all-at-once design, which
- accepting of course that at least part of the chicken must pre-empt the egg -
nevertheless tend (like the mass-taste forms of ‘suburbia’ or the
resolved/received objects of architecture) to specify the forms of living before
it is lived and/or bring a previously ‘sketched’ apt to a sudden
detailed finality [4]. This self-contained finality/completeness
emphasised the strangeness of
individual ‘houses’ stacked inside the cellular megastructure of a
factory [5]. Contrast these conditions and results with the
youthful SILO where domestic forms accrete in step with needs and in
reciprocation with the site, where scenic wonders and even inimical features
stimulate an inventiveness which is (even in jokes) pragmatically expressed in
‘immediate time’, rather than considered and aesthetic.

In Tetterode's domestication phase (after the initial squatting of glass-walled
Merkelbach by artists for studios) a choice seems to have been made to enable a
high density of occupation requiring many small apts. Why
did the relatively few initial occupiers, in charge of huge empty spaces, adopt
such a high-density occupation policy?

Rein answered [text edited]:
In the mid seventies the Dutch government introduced the
so called "HAT-Eenheid". Under pressure by the squatting-scene, this
kind of housing was ment for small one- or two-person households. These houses
should be payable[?]
and it should be possible to create more apartments within one house.
I'm not really sure, but I think a one-person HAT-Unit was about 45 square
meters and they were very popular shortly after their introduction and they soon
were "state of the art" for modern and alternative housing. Therefore
as a squat, to be able to reach a legal status, it was very important to get as
close as possible to the HAT-Unit, because local bureaucrats understood how to
handle those.
For us as squatters it also was very important to be as efficient as possible
with the buildings we squatted. Therefore we tried to realize as many apartments
as possible to offer as many people as possible affordable apartments. On the
other hand we tried to be as non-HAT as possible, because we did not like to
live in "normed" apartments only a few square meters big (the so
called 'egg laying battery'...). So, using the statistical facts of the building,
we tried to realize as many apartments as possible, in a way that the city of
Amsterdam could as easily as possible compare with HAT-Units, and we
"enlarged" the HAT-Norm as much as possible to realize bigger
apartments as HAT-Units.
For Tetterode the basic statistical unit was one window for each normal
apartment. For studios the assumption was that people would live and work there
and therefore needed more space. And some spaces
were a little bit bigger than usual, because of local statistical conditions.

Indeed, when I next recorded Tetterode apts in early 2008, this type of
development was blatant.

Exemplified in the 90s by
INA HEUVEL/GER BERGEVOET APT [hc-L4]: Inception 1986
- in 1991 treated as a single (almost) finalised work: totally and all-at-once re-designed and re-constructed.
By 2008 there were several such 'stage 3', and even 'stage 3-4' apts.

This
tour of residential Tetterode begins on the next page in the Dacostakade block with an account of
its two buildings and their vertical routes. On subsequent pages we enter their
domestic enclaves and many dwellings - starting in Merkelbach, then Hartcamp.
Then we move to Tetterode's west side Bilderdijk block and explore its internal
routes and enclaves. Finally we visit the quasi-domestic enclave in the
Bilderdijk-North buildings.